NEW DELHI: BJP on Tuesday slammed Sonia Gandhi’s denunciation of the government’s silence over the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a US-Israeli attack as the party recalled the deceased Iranian’s support for the secessionist forces in Kashmir and said diplomacy cannot be reduced to appeasement or performative politics.BJP’s foreign department head Vijay Chauthaiwale cited several statements of Khamenei that were critical of India and said Sonia needed to “brush up” her memory. In one statement in 2017 the Iranian leader had called for the “Muslim world to openly support the people of Yemen, Bahrain, and Kashmir and repudiate oppressors and tyrants who attacked them,” Chauthaiwale said. “India has not been silent. It has consistently called for restraint, respect for sovereignty, and de-escalation. With millions of citizens living and working across the Gulf, along with critical economic and energy linkages, reckless commentary is neither practical nor responsible,” he said. Sonia’s article portraying India’s response to the crisis as “silence” is misleading and reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of responsible diplomacy, BJP’s Amit Malviya said. He added when Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was killed in 2011, the Congress-headed UPA govt neither issued a condolence nor mounted any condemnation. “Was the UPA wrong in 2011, or is the Modi govt right today? One cannot have two foreign policies: one in opposition and another in power,” he said.
